The gymnasium is a place where people asked you the most stupid things. It would seem that weight training not only thickened the muscles, but thickened the grey matter as well. Not even a single day passes by without someone asking me something silly.
Today was not any different. I picked up the phone which was shaking violently at being ignored despite screeching as best as it could.
"Who is this?"
"Yoo hoo"
"Yoo hoo yourself. Who yoo?"
"Iam Yoo hoo. We a yoo's mother. He is the chinese student you took in under your guidance yesterday."
"Oh ok. How a yoo?"
"Ho a yoo will join too. Sir, I wishes to asketh some dowbts"
"Shoots...er...shoot"
"You gave my son a diet chart. You tolds to eat 8 small meals a day, to lose weight. Now my son has breakfast, lunch and dinner. Only three meals and he is fat. Now you asketh him to eats eight meals. It will make him fatter faster."
I explained to her why the three meal system did not work and 8 small meals would help him.
"Why is Wee a yoo is fat and Ho a yoo is not fat? Both eat the same food."
"They eat the same food?"
"Yes, they do"
"Have the same father too?"
"I don't understand"
"Never mind. They eat the same quantity too?"
"Almost. Actually We a yoo eats a little less, always"
"You mean the fat one?"
"Yes"
"And is fatter than the thin one?"
"Yes. The fat one is fatter than the thin one"
"The fat one will always be fatter than the thin one. It is only natural"
"No sir, you do not understand. Why is the fat one fatter than the thin one, even though he eats less?"
"It is only natural"
"What is?”
"The fat one being fatter than the thin one. The world over, the fat ones have always been fatter than the thin ones. I don't think your fatso…..er...fat son is going to be an exception and become fatter than the thin one, and still be thinner than the thin one. He will always be fatter than the thin one"
"But why is he fatter than the thin one when they eat the same food and about the same quantity too?
"He is probably eating something on the sly"
"No, he is not"
"He may not tell you everything, but boys will be boys and they always do like to try out something more interesting. They do the same with all women"
She left it at that. Needless to say there are always people heckling me with utter nonsense. It has always been so, ever since I started a gymnasium on my own.
This story I am about to tell you, happened a long time back, just about the time when I had just set up a gymnasium and was eager to catch all business that passed by my door.
I had personally met and promised each and every owner of shops and business centres on my building a certain sum of money for every member they sent to my gym. And soon the business started to look good.
I also engaged the services of two big muscular hunks to train the members and paid them well enough to tell everyone that they became this big because of my training methods. These guys were heavily armed with all the muscular protrusions from neck down, but a little light and numb in the upper regions of their cerebral cortex. This was probably, I presumed, due to the fact these mountains of muscles did not get enough oxygen to work their brain and brawn at the same time. An occupational hazard; you were either big or strong or you were intelligent.
To compound matters further, there was this girl who had this nasty habit of standing a little too close to you when she had to ask a few doubts. She was pretty enough to stop all traffic if she just as much as appeared on the sidewalk of a road, and needless to say these muscle heads suffered a lot at her hands. She would sneak up on one of these guys from behind, stand so close and touch the shoulders before saying,
"Rosh, do you think my arms will stop looking this delicate if I did these arm exercises?"
The minute she put her hand on Rosh's shoulders, all his hair stood on end as if trying to be the first to reach out and touch her. He also shook mildly like a well oiled engine of a Royal Enfield bike and even purr ever so softly. He would turn around very slowly, taking utmost care not to knock her down and mustering all the gentleness at his command, coo so.
"No, Preeti, it will not happen. I have taken all the care in the world to make sure you do only those exercise which keep your arms this delicate, always"
"Oh, thanks Rosh...I always knew I could count on your advises. You really are one of those gentle giants... the kind women fall for."
And she would move a millimetre or so, closer. Now, this is the most dangerous moment in a man's life. Ask him to meet raging bulls head on or dive into a pool full of piranhas or jump inside a lion cage and pull its tail while it is gobbling up its dinner, he will do so without hesitation. Ask him to turn around, like Rosh had to turn around, and look at a girl in the eye and stay there without shaking like a leaf in a thunderstorm is asking him to do the impossible. And yet, this was what Rosh had to do, turn around, look at the girl in the eye and not shake like this particular leaf that shakes its hips everytime she hears the word thunderstorm.
I happen to be one of the seasoned campaigners who had gone through worse in life and lived to tell the tale. You know... one of those guys who could turn around, look a pretty girl in the eye and not shake like this silly leaf I told you about. There are two ways of doing this. You had to clinically analyse why a leaf shook in a thunderstorm. I found the leaf's absolute lack of body weight being the reason for shaking so violently. In such situations, I always lifted something heavy and attached myself to it like an adhesive tape so that the heavy object would clamp down on all vigorous vibrations of the body. Another way was to suck in a gallon or two, more if you can, of the available air around you and hold the bally gas in you. This will also pin you to the ground.
Rosh's only option was to suck in and deprive the neighbourhood of all available oxygen. He grew about three inches sideways, before he looked at Preeti in the eye, as he was supposed to do. He had to take immense care not to knock Preeti down on the way to getting bigger as she was standing very very close. In fact, she stood so close to him that if she moved any closer, she would end up being on the other side of Rosh. Taking most care not let out an ounce of gas, he cooed again,
"Geee, Pranks Theeti.....er..ahh...I mean.....thanks Preeti"
Now, this intimacy did not go unnoticed in the gym. The thing with boys, especially those aspiring to be big and muscular is that they simply assumed that every beautiful girl who just as much as looked at them invariably fell in love with them too. And every single laddie in the gym thought that Preeti was his and considered it a real monkey business if someone just as much as glanced at her. The thing with this business of being a monkey is that you consider it a sin to monkey with another monkey's monkey.
One of the monkeys to voice his dissent was none other than the other trainer, Jay. Jay was bigger, taller and considered it impudence on the part of Rosh to have gone the distance with Preeti. Now, it was his turn to shake like a leaf in a thunderstorm. He shook very differently from the other leaf of which I mentioned, and it was obvious that lifting weights or sucking in air was not going to pin him down.
"What do you think you are doing, Rosh?"
“What do you think I was doing, Jay?"
Rosh was not about to back down and if he purred like the well oiled engine of a Royal Enfield bike earlier, he shook like the bike that developed engine trouble all of a sudden, now.
"Hey, cut it out" I jumped in between these two Himalayas of muscles.
This couldn’t go on forever. I had to stop these mountains of muscles from fighting with each other. I couldn’t fire them, because they were good trainers and the boys liked them a lot. But on the other side, if I let it go unchecked, it might prove to be the funeral of one of the trainers. I fervently wished something would happen that would shape up things for the better.
And then, it happened.
If Jay and Rosh were Himalayas of muscles, this guy who walked into the gym that day was so huge he blocked all sunlight falling on earth. His neck was so big it could give a rhino an inferiority complex; his arms so long, hairy and huge that you would think he stole them from a Gorilla and when he walked, the floor shook mildly [ not the same way that bally leaf that shaked ..er ..shooked.. ah...er...shook in thunderstorm] and had the grace, finesse and polish of a Tyrannosaurus with docked tail.
"Are you the owner of this hole?" T Rex asked me in a voice that resembled a rumble from the skies.
I think I said yes, though I do not remember hearing me say it, but T Rex nodded and growled.
"I wanna sign up"
There was something very terrifying of this monster dinosaur that my fingers acted like they were struck by 'rigor mortis'; a condition very akin to the feeling you get if a few ants crawled inside your pants, decided to attack and bite your rump while you are in a bus jam-packed with beautiful girls.
When T Rex worked out, all gym stopped to watch and held their breath. Lights flickered, altering from dim and bright in excitement. Boys gaped with their mouth open and Preeti watched him with the intensity of anticipation that comes to girls when they see Salman Khan about to step out of car at their door front.
T Rex was not exactly oblivious to all this attention and subservience from the other members. In fact, he enjoyed it very much especially when Preeti ignored Jay and Rosh and gave her undivided attention to him. Every time she cast a glance at T Rex, his lungs swelled up, his cheeks puffed up, his Adams Apple rolled up and down as though he was gulping down a few apples that rolled down his mouth, eventually landing in his stomach, his eyes bulged out as though he was trying to take in as much of Preeti as possible; all this causing him lift weights cranes would crumble under. He was also getting to be a little threatening in his posture if Preeti just as much glanced at anyone as he would stare that guy down. It caused so much consternation that in a week's time, all the boys in the gym had stopped looking at Preeti as though she was made of Baskin Robbins’s Iron Butter Scotch with black cherries on top laced with tangerine crème.
Now, it was Preeti’s turn to get worried. In the past, she used to get any man’s undivided attention and now, the boys would look away if she was anywhere in the vicinity. She could not figure out how this change could have come over these boys and everytime, she tried to get one of the members into a conversation, she would find that she was talking to a man who was about to do 100 m dash from where she was standing. But girls being girls, she did figure out that the reason was indeed T Rex. This seemed to upset her no end and she decided to hit back at T Rex as best as a woman could. And as they say, hell hath no fury than a woman scorned.
I did not know that she had these horrid plans for T Rex and I was to play a key role in it. As a normal man who was normally inclined to be attracted to beautiful women, it was only normal that I fell for her sweet talk and overtures, which were calculated to catch T Rex’s attention. I, on my part, was especially overjoyed when she started to give me all the attention she could bring to her command. She would loudly say, every time after her workout,
“Venu dear, would you please give me ride home?.”
“Sure, Preeti”
“I like sitting behind a strong man like you, who is so much in control of the bike”
Out of the corner of the eye, I could see that this remark from Preeti made T Rex swallow in a few gallons of air through the mouth and nose, so fast so that, it pulled some of the dumbbells up, making them stand on end, as though wishing to announce their willingness to be sucked into his cavernous thoracic cavity. He also uttered sounds like the kind you hear from a marsh buffalo which took in a swirl of green grass with a swish of its tongue and found out that it was actually made of fibre plastic. Occasionally he would shake his head violently, that resembled an elephant shaking off mud from its body. His displeasure was very obvious and a shadow of physical assault loomed large over my fragile self. But then, it was all worth it, for Preeti had eyes only for me and she made no bones about showing it.
Or so I thought. I even told all in the gym that Preeti was my girl and we intended to elope someday soon, because her parents did not like their daughter to marry a muscle head. I even started looking around for a house where we could stay after marriage. I believed that Preeti would say yes when I proposed, because no woman would dare to openly flirt so much with a man unless she wished to go all the way. Or so I thought.
Then it happened. I always had some kind of protection in the gym from T Rex, but outside, it was a different matter. I was always careful not to run into T Rex on the road. I’d rather if got hit or run over by a car. I was so careful that I would not take off the helmet in a restaurant, while eating. With great difficulty, I would drink my coffee; with greater difficulty, eat my meals and with the greatest difficulty, washed my face and mouth after a meal; all with the helmet on. People would stare at me as though I was a little numb in the head, but I was sure they would do the same if they were chased by a cloned monster that was a cross between a Tyrannosaurus and a human being. He was probably an experiment that went partially wrong; in the process of making a clone that had the brains of a human and the strength of a Tyrannosaurus.
“Sir, why do you always eat with a helmet on your head?” asked the cashier at the hotel, while I was paying the bill.
“Just to make sure that no flies ever flew into my mouth while I opened my mouth to eat”. I answered cryptically.
“Well, you only had to keep your mouth shut instead of clamping your entire head with a helmet, to prevent flies from flying inside”
“Now, if I kept my mouth shut, through which entrance would I push the food in, you silly ass?”
“Oh ohh, okay”. I seemed to have driven the point home.
“Hey you” I shuddered at the sound and turned around. T Rex was standing behind me with an expression that said “What would you like to be written on your tombstone?”
I tried to run past him, but he picked me up like you would a kitten. I twisted and swirled violently causing my helmet, which was not tied tight, to fly off and land on T Rex’s head. His head being bigger and wider, the helmet did not reach all the way down and looked like a roman warrior’s head gear minus the feathers and other paraphernalia. It also covered T Rex’s eyes for a brief moment which gave just enough time to free myself and run for cover. I turned to look back after a few steps and found that T Rex had lost his balance and fallen down on the ground, ramming the helmet hard and tight against his head. He tried to get up, but the fall had the fluid in his ears, cochlea to shake violently, preventing him from being able to stand upright.
This was my great opportunity and I ran back to the hotel and asked the waiter if I could have some pepper. And then, I generously sprinkled the pepper right into the hole provided by the helmet, on to his face and eyes. He uttered sounds very similar to the ones made by lions that were fighting over a kill and every time he tried to get up, I kicked his knees causing him to lose balance. Just so when I was about to knock him down the 48th time, a police jeep pulled up by my side and out jumped a tall officer who was built like Arnold Shwarzenneger but looked like Tom Cruise. Following him out of the jeep was my pretty Preeti, making my eyes shut and open a few million times, faster than the shutter of the fastest camera ever made.
“Hiya Guys. Meet my husband, Godwin I.P.S”.
“You are married?” I finally managed to say as much, as I watched out of the corner of the eye T Rex get up and stand erect with great difficulty. He then, proceeded to pull the helmet off so violently that I thought his head would also come off, still hinged to the helmet.
“Yes, almost two years now. What are you guys doing?”
“Eh…ar…we …”
“He was showing me how easy it was to lose balance if your eyes were covered” T Rex answered with an amiability that left me shaking like that bally leaf I told you about. He then proceeded to put his hand on my shoulder and said,
“Venu dear, would you please give me ride home?”
“Sure, dud…er...dude”
“I like sitting behind a strong man like you, who is so much in control of the bike”.
He then turned around and winked at Preeti, before handing the helmet over to me.
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